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Thursday, May 19, 2016

Monster Craze Tome, "Monster Mash," Returns from the Beyond with Second Printing

Monster Mash named 2016's “Book of the Year” at the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards

New printing of the sold out book digs up the dirt on the 1960s Monster Craze in America

(RALEIGH, NC) Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957-1972 has won "Book of the Year" at the 2016 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. First presented in 2003, the award is named for the great Rondo Hatton (1894-1946), who played a character called the Creeper in three unrelated films, “The Pearl of Death,” “House of Horrors” and his final film, “The Brute Man.” Highly coveted and prestigious in the classic monster world, this award comes just after the book's initial print run sold out, less than a year after its debut.

So this week, TwoMorrows Publishing releases a second printing of Monster Mash, the full-color hardcover that time-trips back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream. Once Frankenstein and fiends infiltrated TV in 1957, an avalanche of monster magazines, toys, games, trading cards, and comic books crashed upon an unsuspecting public—and this book covers that creepy, kooky Monster Craze through features on Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the #1 radio hit “Monster Mash,” Aurora’s model kits, TV shows (Shock Theatre, The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Dark Shadows), “Mars Attacks” trading cards, Eerie Publications, Planet of the Apes, and more.

Author Mark Voger's lifelong love of all things Monster led him to interview an enormous slate of celebrities as entertainment writer for the New Jersey Star-Ledger newspaper, and those contacts have served him well for this labor-of-love project, which features James Warren (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines), Forrest J Ackerman (Famous Monsters of Filmland), John Astin (The Addams Family), Al Lewis (The Munsters), Jonathan Frid (Dark Shadows), George Barris (monster car customizer), Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (Rat Fink), Bobby (Boris) Pickett (Monster Mash singer/songwriter) and others, with a Foreword by TV horror host Zacherley, the “Cool Ghoul.”

"I believed in monsters as a kid. The evidence was everywhere," recounts Voger. "I saw my first "Dark Shadows" episode when I was 9, and fell deeply, madly in love with the character Josette after seeing photos of actress Kathryn Leigh Scott in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. The Monster Craze was an innocent, naive, fun time for us dopey little kids. We identified with those deformed, hated creatures who, after all, only wanted love. As someone who was a child during the Craze, my aim is to report on the era with the viewpoint of an eyewitness."

In addition to coverage of pivotal moments of the Monster Craze, this book has hundreds of full-color photographs and illustrations of the casts of Monster films and television shows, plus all the rare Halloween costumes, trading cards, board games, model kits, comic books, and magazines that had us running for our lives (and toy stores) in the 1960s.

This full-color hardcover is 192 pages long, and retails for $39.95. It is now available again in both print and digital editions, through TwoMorrows' website (www.twomorrows.com), comic and bookstores through Diamond Comic/Book Distributors, on Amazon.com, and through the company's app on the Apple and Android platforms.